I squeeze my eyes closed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “No, no, it’s cool.”

“You are such a liar.”

“Are you sure Avya’s fine with this?” Avya and I knew each other before she started dating Zach, but I don’t want her to be uncomfortable.

“She’s the one who suggested you.”

I open my eyes, staring up at the foggy, snowy sky. I love the day-to-day interactions with my clients. This is just . . . an odd one.

How could I possibly say no? Birthing class it is.

• • •

If you were to have asked me what I thought I might be doing tonight, there are a lot of answers I could have given you: Xbox with my cousins, wrapping presents with Double D, rereading Evil’s old texts again and again until I eat a box of ice cream sandwiches solo and blame it on my dad somehow.

The possibility of ending up with someone else’s wife in a room full of pregnant women and their partners would not have occurred to me.

Yet here I am.

I meet Avya out front and we hug, exchanging a few pleasantries and a comment or two about the weather. It’s a little awkward at first because I don’t know where to look or what to say—or really even how to hug a very, very pregnant woman.

Per usual, Avya breaks the ice. “Ready to go talk about my vaginal birth?” she says, yoga mat rolled up under one arm.

I don’t even know what to say to this. With a smile, I open the door, motion for her to lead, and follow her inside.

As far as birthing classes go, this one doesn’t seem too bad. It’s in a large open space and feels a lot like hanging out in sweatpants in a friend’s living room. It’s a plus if you’re trying to keep things natural, I guess.

Natural seems to be an ongoing theme: managing pain as best you can through natural methods, but not placing judgment on yourself or anyone else if a situation arises where you change your mind. An aside: if modern science ever figures out a way for men to experience the miracle of birth, put me down for a No. If the No option is full, I’ll take drugs. Lots of them.

Our teacher’s name is Meredith. She’s knowledgeable and soft-spoken and walks from couple to couple adjusting posture and widening a stance, or moving a foot here and there. We go through a series of stretches, the first with all of us on our hands and knees, gently rocking our hips back and forth in some sort of air hump, and I am so glad in this moment that Avya and I never had sex before Zach came along.

“That’s good,” Meredith says, looking out over the class. “Arch that back, swing those hips in a figure eight. Feel the motion. Back and forth, back and forth. Enjoy that movement, because who knows when you’ll feel it again after this, am I right?”

Avya catches my eye over her shoulder for a beat before we dissolve into laughter.

“God, Evie will not believe this,” I say, helping Avya into the next position.

“Evie, Evie,” she repeats slowly. “Don’t think Zach’s mentioned that name before.”

“She’s an agent back in LA.”

“Same agency?”

“Yeah. Sort of. It’s a long story.”

“You’re dating an agent you work with? My life is so boring right now—thank God I made Zach ask you to come.”

“Not dating.” Even I hear the ew, girls implied by my tone.

“Snooze,” Avya complains, bending forward, her long black hair hiding her face. “Then why would she particularly care about this class? Entertain me, Carter.”

“She was with P&D before the merge,” I say, and Avya nods. “Anyway, she goes with the wife and child of one of her clients to a sensory class in Beverly Hills.”

“Let me guess: they paid the equivalent of one month’s rent on a one-bedroom in Queens to have their kids play in some totally basic thing, like pudding or bedsheets.”

“Pasta, actually. How’d you know?”

“I went to something similar when Joshua was little, but with parachutes.”

“Parachutes?”

“We adopted Joshua from his birth mother when he was a newborn,” she explains, “so I missed the whole birthing thing with him. Hence this class.” She gives me another smile over her shoulder. “We laid all the babies down in a big circle, and all the mommies lifted this giant, circus-tent-looking parachute over them, fanning it up and down. It sounds great in theory, but the babies were just way too young to enjoy it. You’re basically yanking this parachute out of their faces and scaring the shit out of them. Half are crying, a few are trying to get away, and the rest are too scared to move.”

“Oh my God,” I say, biting my lip and looking around for the instructor. The last thing I need is to get a client’s wife kicked out of her birthing class. “I’m sorry, that’s not funny.”

“Oh, it’s totally funny. As parents we put our kids through the strangest things because we think it’s giving them some sort of advantage.”

The instructor has the mothers-to-be move into a squat that looks a lot like they’re sitting on a toilet, and explains the benefits of this position, including what it’s doing to the perineum, and some other things I can’t focus on.

“How’s the perineum?” I say. “Good?”

Avya shakes her head like she can’t believe we’re doing this. “Relaxed. Thanks. Now, more about this Evie.”

I sigh, then just let it all out. “Simply put, Evelyn Abbey is my former almost-girlfriend-turned-archnemesis-turned-tentative-ally whom I would now very much like to permanently seduce.”

The glee on Avya’s face tells me I should continue. “It’s a long, complicated story involving first dates followed by corporate greed, competing for a single position, and sabotage.”

“Okay, that is decidedly not as fun as I imagined.”

“The thing is, she’s smart and gorgeous and funny and amazing at her job, and it was infuriating. We were essentially told they could only keep one of us, and it made us into maniacs. I’d be listening to her in a meeting, totally mesmerized, then I would snap back to the conversation and want to let the air out of her tires for distracting me from my goal.”

“And your goal was . . .”

“Total annihilation, of course.”

We move to the next seated position, with Avya in front of me and between my legs, her back against my chest.